The United States military has been operating drones for decades, but there's one Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS) that most people know: the MQ-1 Predator, which is one of the best military drones ...

The RQ-1, and its armed cousin ... mission planners much greater flexibility compared to the diminutive MQ-1 Predator. But the MQ-9's enhanced capabilities do not mean that the Predator is ...

The MQ-1's capabilities make it uniquely qualified ... selected the U.S. Air Force as the operating service for the RQ-1 Predator system. The "R" is the Department of Defense designation for ...

On Feb. 16, 2001, a RQ-1 Predator with an inert AGM ... Fast forward six months later and the armed Predator, eventually dubbed the "MQ-1," fired its first missile in combat during the opening ...

The Air Force will officially retire its iconic, groundbreaking — and controversial ― MQ-1 Predator on March ... version of the Predator, the RQ-1, in Albania in July 1995, and also set ...

July 30, 2010: The manufacturer of the MQ-1 Predator UAV, General Atomics, is now marketing the unarmed version, the RQ-1, to civilian customers, as the Predator XP. By modifying it so that it's ...

As the Air Force moves to an all MQ-9 Reaper remotely piloted combat aircraft fleet, it will officially retire the MQ-1 Predator in 2018 ... first designated as the RQ-1 -- and "the crews who ...

MQ-1 Predator. Image source ... Well, you can buy a brand-new RQ-11 Raven unmanned aerial vehicle from AeroVironment for just $34,000 -- the cost of just seven hours' flying time in a Reaper.

General Atomics Aeronautical Systems has delivered its final batch of unarmed RQ-1s to the Italian Air ... in 2011 upon final delivery of an armed MQ-1 Predator to the US air force, which has ...

Over 20 percent of those hours were flown this year. The Predator replacement, the MQ-9 Reaper, has flown nearly 250,000 hours so far. America's large UAVs (MQ-1, MQ-1C, MQ-9, RQ-4, and RQ-170) flew ...